Will Irons take King County to the Brink-O-Doom?

“For the last five years, you have been teaching me how King County government can work better. I have been listening, and now I want to take that knowledge and my 25 years of practical business experience to make it more efficient and more accountable.”

Hmm. So, if elected, Irons wants to apply his “practical business experience” to running King County, huh? Then I guess, judging from the four years he spent as Chief Operations Officer of Brigadoon.com, Irons should have the county in bankruptcy before the end of his first term.

Even when their employees were living on tuna and rice, their creditors were cutting them off for ignoring millions in debt and their investors were fuming that they’d been swindled, the leaders of Brigadoon.com said they’d be a great success. … But the company discovered it could not deliver. It posted a more than $10 million operating loss while attracting millions from nearly 200 accredited investors from around the world. It hired more than 110 employees at one point and ordered expensive equipment.

See… the problem with the oft repeated admonition that government should be run more like a business… is that most businesses fail.

Anyway, I’d love to hear from any former “Brink-O-Doom” employees about the company’s “ingenious business plan” and Iron’s role in failing to execute it. Drop me an email.

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Gee Goldy, Scrolling further down… the author seems to speak highly of Irons and seems to distance Irons from the loser Hansen who drove this business into the ground.

Nice job: 1. Conveniently ignoring Irons’s role as described in the article. 2. Tying together the frothy days of the Internet bubble together with “most businesses fail” to …government? not sure you really intended to go there. 3. Implying that “government should NOT be run like a business”? That would be a catchy campaign slogan, why don’t you pass that along at the next neo-lib candidates training event. 4. Taking something he did for 2 years, 8 plus years ago and twisting it to tar and feather the person, regardless of relevance or facts.

The vast majority of business failures occur when revenue does not cover expenses. Government has unlimited revenue. So running government more like a (successful) business should be a no brainer.

Goldy, you may be on to something here. However, I did read the Seattle Times article perhaps more closely than you did. David Irons Jr. was Chief Operating Officer from 1995 to 1997, which is only two years or so — not four years. Irons says he charged $50,000 on his personal credit card in order to make payroll for the employees. Irons says he quit because the CEO was a free spender. Brigadoon.com filed bankruptcy in the spring of 1998. You should have a few days worth of material in any event to make your blog more exciting.

Goldy— I agree that each candidate’s work history, accomplishments and failures are fair game in an election contest. Sims has a horrible track record himself. This could be the ultimate battle of WHO IS THE LEAST WORST!

I have no opinion on this because I’m not very well informed on it. The only thing I know for sure is that I won’t be voting for a Republican. I was going to vote for R. Pope because I thought he was reasonable and honest, but then he quoted the execrable Drudge Report in several of his posts and I lost all respect for the bitch.

I didn’t conveniently ignore anything. I always provide links to my source material so that my readers can make up their minds for themselves, a fact that people like you conveniently ignore whenever you accuse me of being misleading.

Second… it is Irons who speaks highly of himself, not the author. Those were Irons’ words about his own actions and motives, not a third party.

But the real point here is that Irons was either played an integral role in a really stupid business model, and an even stupider, irresponsible execution of it (hell… they were just playing with other people’s money)… or… he was stupidly duped by the other founders, just like everybody else. Either way, it doesn’t put him in a very good light.

One failed business venture should not define a man’s career, but there’s no getting around that this was a huge failure that screwed both investors, vendors and employees (and probably, more than a few customers.) Like most dot.coms, Brigadoon was an ill-conceived get-rich-quick scheme. Either Irons bought into the dream, which suggests a bit greed and foolishness on his part, or he cynically sold it.

I read the article. Irons was the COO as these payments were handed out. He talks about the spending that was happening (at the expense of payroll) while he was COO, not after or before. Unless COO was just a title with no power, he obviously had knowledge and management authority. Ethically, he is culpable. Therefore this does, and should, cause folks grave concern.

Check the dates from this excerpt — he’s a senior management guy who has full knowledge (He can’t even play the Enron, Worldcomm, Adelphia, Tyco, name your favorite Republican ethically challenged company and executive) line of “I didn’t know”:

“King County Councilman David Irons Jr., who was Brigadoon.com’s chief operating officer from 1995 to 1997, recalls how Hansen spent five months and more than $10,000 toying with a new logo. Irons says the company once spent $25,000 to send four executives to the 1996 Comdex Internet trade show while employees weren’t getting paid.

Before Christmas 1996, Hansen promised employees they’d be paid, but he failed to follow through when an investor backed out. Irons said he was furious and put $50,000 on his credit card to make payroll. Irons said he later quit because of Hansen’s free spending.”

I thought Brigadoons were some kind of cocoanut macarroon. Go ahead ,Dribblypud, check the spelling on “maccarroon” and if I’m wrong write a bitter little tome dunning me and the whole left wing conspiracy. Don’t forget to mention Chappaqiddick.

Zip, you’re forgetting that Goldy admits he isn’t a journalist and doesn’t give a damn about journalistic ethics — not that the MSM always does, but… Remember, Goldy has said more than once here and in interviews that he just writes for himself. Not that the Times article is acutally about Hansen, but Goldy twists it for his own purposes.

That is one of the big problems with blogs, especially partisan ones on BOTH sides. They (can) have a big reach, have the journalistic legitimacy of the S*cialist Workers paper, but serve to mentally masturbate the “party faithful” nonetheless.

I know what Irons went through. Some years back, I was hired to bring some operational stability to a non-dot-com startup with an equally free-spending CEO. No matter what I did, the charismatic founder blew money anyway. There was no other option but to quit.

You obviously have little or no experience in the business world — or at least the world of small startups (and 100 employees is a small company). In such a case, a charismatic founder can run roughshod over everyone else in the company, even C-level “execs.” There is no process, no oversight.

The three situations you cite from the article could easily have happened behind Irons’ (or any other exec’s) back. How?

1. CEO calls up some fancy ad agency and, on his/her word, they begin work. And $10,000 for big ad agency work is NOTHING.

2. Sales manager meets with CEO and asks if they can send reps to Comdex. CEO, wanting to look like a “big fish” in the industry says, “book the rooms and tickets. Make us look good. Go!” Knowing Irons could put a stop to it, sales manager puts everything into motion (including telling potential clients you’ll be there) quickly enough so that pulling out is no longer an option.

Sadly, this happens every day in business (and even in government). A competent person is hired to do a job, but the owner/boss/leadership really just wanted someone with a good reputation to rubber-stamp bad decisions. The good guy says, “you can’t keep going around me” about a dozen times and then quits. Looks like that happened with Irons, too.

It is sad that most voter’s decisions these days are based on negatives, instead of positives. Ideology and principles play a much smaller role than trying to figure out which candidate will be the least worst from each voter’s point of view.

So now we have David Irons Jr., who made a colossal failure of his most significant business venture (or at least was un-bright enough to be associated with such a failure) and Ron Sims, who has never been in business and has made semi-serious failures in many areas of King County government.

I doubt that many people are going to be able to think about the positive things that Mr. Irons and Mr. Sims have accomplished in their lives, or what kinds of programs and policies each gentleman would try to implement for the people of King County if elected in November.

Richard @ 20: “So now we have David Irons Jr., who made a colossal failure of his most significant business venture (or at least was un-bright enough to be associated with such a failure)”

Richard, how can you say this without knowing what was really there? Read my posts above. Such a thing happens all the time. MAYBE the only bad thing he did was to be overly optimistic that he could fix things, which resulted in him staying there too long.

As for his most significant job… He’s the CEO of some company now (and has been for a number of years).

This is how bad reporting starts weak rumors that nonetheless won’t die.

Dear dumbass ballsless looney – you DO realize don’t you that Drudge culls his ‘report’ from OTHER MAINSTREAM NEWS SOURCES, and links them in their original form… including The NYT, Sacramento Bee, St Pete Times, LA Times…

Really, I am not that concerned about the mere fact that Brigadoon dot com was a colossal failure. If a bunch of overly optimistic investors think they can have a 30% per year return on their money, and end up with minus 100% return, that is free enterprise. Chalk up the investor’s losses to cupidity.

This bit about not paying the employees gets me much more upset. Irons, after all, was Chief Operating Officer of the company. But if he borrowed $50,000 on his personal credit for this purpose, he should be commended.

I am sure the Democrats will be going to the federal court archives at Sand Point, dig up the Brigadoon bankruptcy file, and see how bad (if at all) their employees ended up getting screwed. So much for any concept of positive campaigning this fall.

Based on my personal experience as something equivalent to a COO in a non-dot-com startup, I can tell you that both the promise of paychecks and the backing out of the investor may have been totally out of Irons’ control. I have seen an CEO make all kinds of promises, get employees’ hopes up and then fail to come through. Also, the job of securing investors often falls primarily to the charismatic founder. If said founder fails to do their job, the COO has nothing to work with.

Sometimes the CEO and/or founder(s) mean well, sometimes they’re just BS artists. Watch the HBO documentary on Air America if you want to see it done the wrong way.

If the drudge report just links to other sources, why is it called a “report”? What are they reporting on? Do they have any standards or ideas on what to report on— or is it just random “reporting”? Why do I have to think for you? You’re making me crazy!!!!!!!!!!(this is the bait)

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